In the digital age, business executives have access to a plethora of business data that they did not have in the past. This business data is analyzed to create key performance indicators (KPIs) which provide valuable insight on the performance of various parts of the company. Business executives often monitor these KPIs throughout the day and draw valuable insights from these KPIs to make critical business decisions. Exemplary KPIs include the number of defects in every 100 items or customer satisfaction.
While this business data is a valuable resource to business executives, the amount of information available can be overwhelming. It can be difficult to monitor this constant flow of changing data. Management information systems have been created to provide a snapshot of the businesses performance however these systems typically have shortcomings. First of all, the snapshots provided are often so densely populated with data that it can be difficult to extract insightful conclusions from them. Moreover, simultaneously presenting multiple charts of different types can be difficult to read. Lastly, the systems are typically tailored for a specific demographic and thus do not translate well across different cultures. As a result, they are not universal and require a learning curve for some users. For example, the color red represents a positive gain in the Shanghai stock market but represents a negative loss in the New York stock market.